Fortune Favours will close its doors for the last time on Sunday but there may yet be life in the brand and the venue could continue as a craft beer destination.
When co-owner and founder Shannon Thorpe announced the decision to shut the popular brewbar in Wellington’s Leeds St, he specified the current economic climate — “the cost of living” — as the main reason.
Thorpe was adamant that a deal done in 2023 which saw Fortune Favours lose access to dozens of taps across the capital was not a factor, nor was losing Coca-Cola as a distributor.
Until 2023, Fortune Favours were majority-owned by Wellington hospitality company Kāpura. That business was taken over by DB Breweries (Heineken)-owned Star Hospitality, a newly formed body that also included bars and restaurants formerly operated by Auckland’s Joylab.
“The obvious thing that people see is the Heineken thing with Star Hospitality, or Coca-Cola pulling the pin, but that’s not the case.
“When Kāpura sold to Heineken, they adequately compensated us when that transaction happened, and we lost all those taps in the market, so that was all done in good faith, it was all. I don’t feel like I wasn’t ripped off — they did right by us.
“So, I definitely want to put this record straight there, it’s nothing to do with that, and same with the Coca-Cola thing. That decision to exit was made by their new European overlords, so it was totally out of the hands of the local Coca-Cola New Zealand team … and we’d already made the decision to retrench into a brewpub model.
“So, what it is, 100%, is the cost of living. Our business was 20% down last year, and 25% down the year before that, so 45% down in two years — there’s not many businesses that can sustain that.
“Everyone in the industry’s hurting at the moment, including big boys.
“And if I was to throw any blame out there, I’d say maybe the government could do a little bit more in terms of excise relief. We see what the government’s done in Australia with $350,000 rising to $400K worth of excise rebates, which just gives all these little breweries that leg up, and that’s the difference between making it or not.
“Even freezing excise for the next two years — it’s too late for me — but I’d love to put a message out there that hopefully maybe one of the powers above might read and go, `well, that actually could have saved them’.”
Thorpe said the well documented hospitality crisis in the capital was due to a combination of ongoing restructures in the public service and a fear of redundancies hanging over peopl.
”I reckon the fear of redundancy is actually worse than redundancy itself. I mean, if you’re scared you’re going to lose your job, what’s the first thing you do? You stop spending, you stop going out, and Wellington’s been in that pattern for the last two years.”
But Thorpe acknowledges he could have made some changes to the business more quickly.
”We’re not without fault ourselves. We’ve had our own challenges I was a bit too slow to react to. But being 45% down over two years — I’ve been in this game for a long time, and I’ve never heard of any numbers like that before.”
While the venue itself is closing, Thorpe didn’t rule out the brand living on.
”What’s definitely happening is [co-owner and brewer] Dale Cooper and I are out. I have had some interest in the brand, and I’m exploring that. And then we’ve obviously got a brew kit and a lease and I’m working with the landlord with a couple of parties to try to facilitate a sale or a releasing to someone new. That gives me the ability to sell the fit out.
”The tanks in there are much more valuable in there than they are out of there. But I can’t say any more than that as they’re all live conversations at the moment.”
For his part Cooper is packing up in Wellington and moving fulltime to the Wairarapa where he has landed a job brewing for the yet to be opened Horseshoe Tavern in Masterton. That trust-owned business opens next month and Cooper publicised the upcoming opening with his Wairarapa IPA, which was the top-rated at Beervana last week.
Cooper had been splitting his time between Wellington and the Wairarapa but is exiting the capital after a long career brewing there.
Thorpe said the decision to wind up the brewpub quickly was done to avoid a ”messy” situation down the line.
”We could have dug in for another six months and ended up in a position where there’s a long list unpaid bills and it could have got quite messy. We’re trying to be as graceful in our exit as possible, if that’s a word for it.”
After a quarter-century in the beer industry, Thorpe is uncertain about his future.
”I still love the industry, and I still love beer. That hasn’t changed. But, yeah, it’s a pretty challenging market, right? I’m not a publican, so I find myself in a position that all we’ve got left is a brew bar and. My role was very much managing those third-party relationships, the Coke relationships, the bStudio relationships, doing the marketing and stuff like that. So now that stuff’s gone away, I didn’t really have a role in the business anyway.
”Give me a month off to lick my wounds and then I’ll just see what’s out there. I’m sure some opportunity will come up. And despite everything that’s happened to me, I still do love Wellington and I’m pretty well entrenched down here with the family.
”So I do want to stay down here, but it’s a pretty tough job market so we’ll have to see what transpires.”